Present Over Perfect-Part 6

Part 6 is the last section of this great book and covers topics of finding yourself, saying yes, knowing that you are worthy of love and already have God’s, and most importantly, BEING YOURSELF-flaws and all. I hope you enjoy this final post on Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist and find time to read this wonderful personal development novel. 🙂 ❤

“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and look back and realize that the best thing about me was that I was organized” (197).

“I want to look back and remember all the times I threw candy, even when it didn’t make sense. Especially when it didn’t make sense” (197).

“You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level” (Thomas Merton ,199).

“The center is reached, once again, through silence, time, honesty, loss; by leaving behind all the voices and expectations, all the selves and costumes of other times, things that worked then but don’t work any longer” (200).

“…every new season of life is an invitation to leave behind the things of the season before, the trappings and traps that have long expired ,right for then, no longer right for now” (200).

“Look at your deepest dreams, and who you’ve always been-the things you love even though no one else does, the times in your life when you feel the most beautiful even if no one else thinks so” (203).

“It’s about God’s love, about the revolutionary and foreign idea that I am loved by God, no matter what” (205).

“…that God loves me, and that there’s nothing I can do in this new day to earn more love-nothing. And also that there’s nothing I can do in this new day to ruin or break that love-nothing” (205).

“Saying yes means not hiding. It means being seen in all your imperfections and insecurities. Saying yes is doing scary things without a guarantee that they’ll go perfectly. Saying yes is telling the truth even when it’s weird or sad or impossibly messy. Saying yes is inviting chaos, and also possibility. Saying yes is building a new future, regardless of the pasts. Saying yes is jumping in anyway” (207).

“That’s what we’re craving: the sense that we matter, that someone sees us, that we are loved and valued” (221).

“Each soul, every soul is worthy, because God made every soul, and because of his love, his Son came to earth and walked among us, because God’s love for us is so deep and wide and elaborate that he wants to be with us, to walk with us, to teach us how to live in that love and worthiness” (221).

“…every soul is worthy, every one of us is worthy of love, having been created by and in the image of the God of love” (221).

“Our souls are what allow us to connect-with God, with other people, with nature, with art” (224).

“It’s from our souls that we love, that we feel, that we create, that we connect” (224).

“Until I realized that the love I was looking for all along is never found in the hustle. You can’t prove it or earn it or compete for it. You can just make space for it, listen for it, travel all the way down to the depth of your soul, into the rhythmic beating of your very own heart, where the very spirit of God has made his home, and that’s where you’ll find it” (231).

“The love you’re looking for is never something you can calculate. It’s not something you can buy or earn or hustle for. It’s something you discover in the silence, in the groundedness, in the sacred risky act of being exactly who you are- nothing more, nothing less” (231).